


Not Broken, Just Bent

by WeDidItKiddo



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 10yo scott wasn't an asshole, Bathtub conversations, did anyone call for cheesecake?, luke might be tho, post surgery angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 00:03:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17570480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeDidItKiddo/pseuds/WeDidItKiddo
Summary: At eight and ten, Tessa and Scott start talking. At nineteen and twenty-one, they stop.





	Not Broken, Just Bent

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if this is going to be a one-shot. I don't know if anyone is going to read a 8K+ chapter. But here we are, so let's just see where this goes, eh?
> 
> (Title from "Just Give Me A Reason" by Pink.)

____________________________

 

you look at me and cry

_everything hurts_

i hold you and whisper

_but everything can heal_

\- rupi kaur

 

____________________________

_The Moir basement, Ilderton_

_Scott’s 10 th birthday party_

 

“TESSA, COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!!”

Tessa’s foot slipped and knocked over a can of beans when Luke’s voice penetrated the door of the pantry, and she froze in her spot behind the food rack as all of her mental energy zeroed in on getting the can of beans to stop rolling before it would hit the door.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

She was mouthing the words as she stared at the can, but her avid attempts were in vain; it didn’t stop rolling, and Tessa saw her chances of winning this game of hide and seek vanish before her eyes when the can blocked out the light that was seeping underneath the pantry door.

Then, just as metal hit wood, Luke’s tired voice drowned out the sound.

“Dude, we’re never going to find her. She’s been hiding for ages and she’s tiny. It’s not even fair.”

“How would that not be fair?” Scott's voice, sounding so close he must've been standing only inches away from the pantry door. “ _She_ can’t help that she’s little.”

Luke mumbled something unintelligible in response, and Tessa pressed her hands against her mouth so hard it almost hurt. She didn’t need the reminder that she was at least a foot smaller than everyone else at Scott's birthday party.

“We haven’t checked the—” Scott started, but either Luke had run out of patience or he was fed up with the game, because he shouted over him.

“Tessa, you can come out! You won!”

Tessa didn’t budge, and Scott’s knuckles rapped against the door of the pantry, almost like morse code. “Luke, she’s not going to come out, we have to find her.”

Damn right she wasn’t. She was by far the youngest of the group of kids that was playing hide and seek, and therefore the one who had the most to prove. The combination of those two had cranked up Tessa’s competitive drive even more than in the rink, where she was younger than every single one of the skaters in her group. If she was going to win this game, they were going to have to find her, too.

“Yeah, of course she’s not," Luke said. "Do you even know if she can talk? I’ve never heard her say anything.”

Tessa’s eyes were starting to burn now. Her mom had always told her “hate” was a big word and that she was never supposed to use it, but she was absolutely, positively sure that she hated Luke.

“Of _course_ Tessa can talk,” Scott answered, his voice sounding flat and forced.

“Are you sure? Does she ever talk to you?”

“Uh, _duh_ , we skate together.”

 _But we don’t_ , Tessa thought. _Not really. I sometimes read the jokes on the Laffy Taffy wrappers, and he screams when we play bubble hockey in his basement on the days when mom and dad can't pick me up straight after practice. Does that even count?_    

“Yeah, well, you don’t need to talk to skate.”

“Maybe she only talks to _friends_ , then.”

She could only feel faintly grateful for the fact that Scott was sticking up for her, because her stomach was doing the clenching thing and tears were burning in her eyes. She was mad at herself for being such a baby, but she couldn’t help it.

“ _Or_ she doesn’t have any friends,” Luke said in a know-it-all kind of way.

Scott’s foot slammed back against the door of the pantry, startling Tessa. “Shut up, Luke.”

 _Just get up and show him_ , she thought. _Show him you can talk._

“No, _you_ shut up!”

_Get. Up._

“ _You_ shut up or I’ll put a hot nut up your but!”

Tessa couldn’t get up. Whatever was happening with her legs, she suddenly couldn’t move them anymore.

“Fine, I’m going to go look for her upstairs.”

Luke sounded pissed off at this point, but she really couldn’t care less. If he went upstairs, at least she could come out of the pantry and ask Scott to keep her hiding spot a secret. Maybe she could even make a run for the bathroom before Luke came back, because she was entering her tenth straight minute of having to pee so badly she could barely concentrate on anything else.

It was the excitement of the game, she knew that. Jordan had told her.

“Fine, whatever!” Scott yelled, his voice high and upset. “Go look for her there, I don’t care!”

“Fine!” Luke sneered, his footsteps already moving away from the pantry.

“ _Fine!_ ” Scott called after him one last time.

Tessa waited for the footsteps to stomp all the way up the stairs before she moved. But what she didn’t know was that Scott was waiting for the exact same thing on the other side of the door, and when the basement door slammed shut behind Luke, he pulled open the pantry in one swift move and surprised Tessa right as she wanted to shimmy her way out of her hiding spot.

“Get back in there, get back.” Scott flapped his hands at her nervously and shut the door, masking the room in darkness once again.

Tessa didn't understand. Was he going to hide _with_ her? 

“But we're not playing sardines, you should—”

“I know that, that's why Luke can’t know.” He was rummaging the shelves in search of something. The next moment, a flashlight switched on that blinded her before he pointed it up at the ceiling. “Just be quiet, okay?”

Tessa hadn’t made up her mind yet when he crouched down in front of her. Was he letting her win this game? But that wouldn’t be a fair win, would it?

He didn’t give her a chance to say no, because he nudged her arm to get her to make space for him. She quickly scooted back into her hiding spot. The little nook was just big enough for the two of them to sit next to each other, the flashlight on the floor between them.

“Why don’t you just tell him I’m here?” she asked in a hushed voice. For some reason, hiding _with_ Scott made the game even more exciting.

He shrugged and looked at her. “Does it matter?”

“Uh…” She stared at him. He smelled like campfire - they'd roasted marshmallows in his backyard right before the game - and he had a streak of dirt from his ear to his nose, which she hadn't noticed before. “I guess not.”

He nodded once, marking the end of that discussion. She watched as he reached for the shelve behind his head like he’d done it a thousand times before; next thing she knew, he was ripping open a little bag of Jolly Ranchers and handing it to her.

“But you don’t like those,” she said, remembering he hadn’t touched the little bag Carol had given them after practice a few days ago.

“No, but I know you do.”

She took the bag from him with a grin. Sitting her with Scott almost made her forget about what Luke had said, but Tessa being Tessa, she could feel the growing need to prove him wrong – even if he wasn’t here. She was able to talk just fine.

“What do you get when you cross a vampire and a snowman?” she asked, chewing the Jolly Rancher behind her hand to hide the smile that was already playing on her lips.

Scott popped three pieces of candy in his mouth all at once. “I don’t know, what do you get?”

“Frost bite,” Tessa answered, and after a beat of silence, he started grinning.

“Good one.”

“Not really,” she said quickly, her self-confidence slipping away just as fast as it had flared up, but Scott nudged her arm.

“Luke is an idiot, Tess. You’re way funnier than any of them.”

She ducked her head, as if she was embarrassed that he would say that. “Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Would I ever break a promise to you?”

Hiding her burning cheeks by pressing her face against her knees, her voice dropped. “Thanks.”

“I mean it, Tess.”

He nudged her again, and she turned her face to smile at him. “Me too.”

 

____________________________

_Plymouth Pub, Canton, Michigan_

_March 2009 (four days before Worlds)_

 

Staring at the content of the glass in her hand, Tessa wasn’t sure what was currently the biggest contributing factor to the feeling of nausea in her stomach: the smell of beer and liquor in the jam-packed pub, the sweltering temperature caused by the buzzing crowd, or the insufferable sound of someone absolutely murdering all the notes to “In Love With A Girl” on the prehistoric karaoke machine in the back.

Those were the most obvious factors for anyone who wasn’t her, of course. Because she knew, despite the fact that she had adopted the “I can do whatever the hell I want” attitude for the night, that the real reason was her shins.

_You should be resting when you have some time off, Tessa._

_If you want to get through practice tomorrow, you should let your legs recover, Tessa._

_I know it’s taking longer than expected, but you just have to give it some more time, Tessa._

_You can’t let Scott down, not after the hell you’ve already gone through last year, Tessa._

That last one was her own addition to the ever-growing list of things people liked telling her to make her feel better (which did absolutely nothing to make her feel better and which she could only still tolerate because the people pleaser in her knew it made _them_ feel better), and tonight, after six months of constant disappointment and setbacks that completely overshadowed any of the progress they’d been making, she’d hit rock bottom.

To hell with the advice.

To hell with lying low and feeling like she was nothing better than the sandbags Scott had used on the ice when she was still recovering from the surgery in London.

To hell with all of it.

And so she found herself in a pub on a Friday night, which was merely a coincidence and initially an escape route from the cab driver who had been hitting on her (or had made a creepy attempt to) from the moment she’d gotten into his car after her appointment at the physiotherapist. She'd gotten out of the cab two blocks into the drive and stood on the sidewalk across the pub to text her roommate, Lauren, that she was going to bail on their movie night to “go out with friends”. Then she’d taken the plunge and mingled with the crowd in the pub as best as she could without looking completely alone and making an easy target of herself for anyone who was looking for company.

(She’d received some slightly alternated versions of Things People Liked Telling Her through multiple texts from Lauren in return, all of which she’d ignored. After all, getting out of that cab had been the beginning of Badass Tess, and Badass Tess wasn’t going to ask her roommate to pick her up and take her home.)

And yeah, there was the fact that they left for Worlds tomorrow, which made today a terrible day to have a mental breakdown. But it wasn’t like she’d been in control of much in her life recently.

Challenging herself not to flinch when the burning liquor went down her throat, she took a sip of her drink. She triumphed, even though it felt like the alcohol destroyed everything in its path. _A golden liquid, but a killer in disguise._

The thought made her giggle out loud.

As she lifted her head to shake her hair out of her face, probably looking more drunk than she actually was because her head was loose on her shoulders and moving along to the beat of the karaoke machine, she noticed she’d attracted the attention from one of the guys who was sitting at the bar with her. His knees were pointing her way, which was never a good sign, and he was close enough to smell his heavy cologne.

She figured Badass Tess would probably return his obvious stares and give him her best flirty smile, but she only managed the gaze.

The first thing she noticed about him - the first thing she noticed about anyone - were his eyes. They were blue. _So_ freaking blue. A quick skim of the rest of his face and flannel + dark jeans combo told her he was good-looking without being tainted by cockiness, and she almost wished he was, because it scared the living shit out of her.

Her attention promptly snapped back to the safety of the bartender.

“One more of this, please.”

The bartender turned and gave her a nod to acknowledge he'd heard her request in the buzz of people who were swarming the bar. He threw his towel over his shoulder to get her another drink, and right when he'd turned his back to her, the door of the pub burst open and his voice reached her ears.

“… goal by Elias was freaking brilliant, even my nephew could see that. The season is still young, but that loss against the Devils today isn’t going to be their last this year, mark my words.”

Tessa’s first thought: _fuck._

Then: _Seriously? Out of all the bars in Canton and on the one night I’m not stuck on my couch at home, you choose to come here with your buddies? Don’t we need at least one of us to do the responsible thing and get some rest before our flight tomorrow?_  

“Are you saying your faith in the Leafs is wavering, after all these years? I expected more from you, Scotty.”

“Don’t fucking call me _Scotty_ , Luke.”

“Or _what_? Are you going to outtwizzle me in those pretty boots of yours?”

A lot of low laughter and hollering followed as the whole bunch entered the pub, and Tessa realized with a start that the guys shuffling their way through the pub were not their mutual skating friends from Canton. After stealing a glance over her shoulder, she recognized Matt and Luke, friends of Scott’s she’d known since childhood.

Most of his hometown friends were a bit of an asshole, but Tessa knew with certainty they were genuinely joking about at least one thing: Scott’s skating. Beneath all that laughter and the ever-returning snide remarks about his figure skates, they respected the hell out of everything she and Scott had ever accomplished.

That didn’t make them any less of a bunch of assholes, though.

The bartender came to her rescue just in time. When Tessa saw him sliding her drink over the bar, she yanked it toward herself before he had even let go, spilling half its content in the process; he raised a brow at her in response like he was actively judging everything about her, from her coat that exuded bad bitch armor (Jordan’s words) to her decision not to wait for him to pass her the drink first. Despite the confidence her coat gave her, she was most likely looking back like she was a deer trapped in headlights.

The reality wasn’t far off. She was trapped here at the bar until she could figure out a way to sneak out of the pub without getting spotted by any of the guys who were currently making their way to the TV screens in the back, where the highlights of a hockey game were playing.

She blinked, broke the eye contact with the bartender, and downed what was left of her drink in one go.

There. Now she was a broken girl trapped at a bar with the scales tipping toward drunk. If Marina wasn’t going to kill her for showing up to the airport with a mild hangover tomorrow, she would surely take care of the killing part herself before the night was over.

Without the distraction of her drink, Tessa had nothing to focus on other than the bartender, who was now getting her undivided attention and clearly still trying to decide if he liked that or not. But for some reason - and it was ticking her off tremendously - Scott and his friends were the loudest people in the room, their voices an annoying background noise she couldn’t shut out.

“… and she was _digging_ it, I’m telling you. I’m sure I could set you two up on a date, no strings attached. You need it, man, you look like you could need some distraction from all the shit you’re going through.”

For _fuck’s_ sake. Couldn’t they at least try to keep their conversation private, or take this someplace where half the population of Canton couldn’t listen in on them hooking Scott up with some dark-haired local Ilderton babe now that his on-off relationship with Jessica was currently off?

“Matt, the offer is nice, but a date isn’t going to fix anything.”

“Dude, you haven’t gotten laid since Jess put things on pause right after New Year’s. I’m just saying, it could be the exactly what you need. Relieve some of the pressure and all that.”

Tessa groaned. Listening in on the details of Scott’s sex life was quickly skyrocketing to the top of things that made her want to throw up. 

“… Tess ever needs any distraction, I’d gladly give her a call, man. You know you can trust me, we’re all classy guys here.”

“ _Classy_ , Luke? Do you really consider yourself a classy guy? I’d give her phone number to Matt before ever considering giving it to you.”

“Whoaaa, getting defensive over our platonic business partner, are we?”

That was Tessa’s cue to leave. She was already halfway off her barstool when the nice guy with the blue eyes suddenly (and totally uselessly) helped her stand upright by grabbing her elbow.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that – I saw you turning as white as a sheet just a moment ago. Are you alright?”

Well, crap. He really was a nice guy, and not just the douchy kind who liked to pretend they weren’t aware of how attractive they really were just to amplify their attractiveness even more to their unsuspected prey. (His attractiveness being an act was all the hope she had left that she wasn’t going to turn down the only nice guy in Canton on a Friday night just because Scott Moir had picked the same pub to get wasted with his hometown friends days before their most important competition of the season. Turns out she was going to do exactly that.)

“Yeah, don’t worry about me, I’m absolutely fine. But thanks for your concern.” She smiled at him, just because she couldn’t stand the thought of hurting his feelings, but she regretted that decision immediately afterward.

Badass Tess wouldn’t try to talk her way out of this. Badass Tess would probably kiss him right now and ask him to take her home.

She resolutely turned to the bar, paid for her drinks, and started walking.

But she only made it a few feet before she stopped.

“What’s your name?” she blurted before her burning legs would carry her out of the door and away from the pub. She stupidly realized she hadn’t turned around yet, so she did, repeating the question while retaining eye contact this time. Which was about a million times more intimidating than she could handle.

“Ryan.” The guy stuck out his hand and she shook it. “Nice to meet you…?”

Damn, even his silences had punctuation. This guy was hardcore.

“Tessa.”

“Tessa.” He smiled again but in a triumphant way, like it was his goddamn mission to walk out of this bar with her on his arm, and that’s how she knew she might’ve been wrong after all.

Maybe Pretty Ryan knew exactly how pretty he was.

“Well, Ryan, it was nice to meet you, but I really have to go.”

_Before I puke all over your – are those designer shoes? On a Friday night in a pub? Really? He’s a freak. Or a workaholic._

Or, as Scott would eloquently phrase it, a total douchebag.

“Maybe I’ll see you around, Tessa.”

For a split second, she envisioned the perfect answer to that sentence that would lead to a totally different end of her night, but in the end, seeing as Badass Tess was already slipping away from her anyway, she settled on a less than satisfying “yeah, maybe”.

And that was it.

Her legs were nearly giving out then, so she turned around and pushed through the crowd, every step of distance between her and Ryan reducing him more and more to just another stranger at a bar, until she stumbled out of the pub in excruciating pain, having forgotten all about him.

She was able to lean over just in time so she wouldn’t puke all over her shoes, but the vomit colored the slushy snow on the sidewalk a dark kind of orange, and she was disgusted.

By herself. By this night. By Scott and his friends.

Scott.

Before the surgery, she never would’ve tried to dodge him like she just did. She never would’ve spent every drive back from Canton in almost complete silence, focused on picking out the baby blue gummies of her fruit snacks instead of trying to have an actual conversation with him, because she didn’t know what to say when they weren’t too busy with their programs to think about anything else. She didn’t want their drives to become an endless repetition of describing exactly how much pain she was in, so she didn’t say anything at all.

Sometimes, she even felt like she couldn’t remember what they were like before all the crappy stuff happened.

Her phone was nearly dead, but she had just enough battery left to call a cab. She arrived home twenty minutes later, where she was greeted by an empty apartment and a note from Lauren saying she was staying at a friend’s until tomorrow and wishing her good luck on “the skating thing”.

(Lauren was a competitive singles skater at AFSC, but they both liked to keep up the act that their skating career wasn’t a big deal. Which, at the end of the day, Tessa thought, it really wasn’t. They made money by twirling around on a frozen water surface with knives on their feet and making it look pretty, for heaven’s sake).

After dropping her keys next to Lauren’s note on the kitchen table, she immediately dove into the freezer to put ice on her shins, migrating to the bathtub afterward because she couldn’t get comfortable anyway (and the tub seemed like the most appropriate place in the apartment to have a semi-emotional breakdown).

Half an hour later, when she had finally plugged in her phone but had made no progress on moving away from her current location, the text that lit up her screen was the first in months that didn’t make her want to throw the device against the wall.

Instead, what she felt was an empty feeling in her gut, like everything had just flushed right out of her and left her hollow.

_Got home okay?_

Maybe there was still something from the Before left. Maybe she hadn’t searched hard enough to find it because they’d been so busy losing the battle of getting their skating to match their sky-high standards again, or maybe this was just a reminder that no matter how hard she tried to hide, Scott Moir would always know where her favorite hiding spot was. Even when she didn’t know it herself.

 _I’m okay,_ she typed back.

It didn’t matter that she wasn’t telling the truth, because he would know anyway.

_I’m at your door. Let me in?_

Her heart ached like a needle jabbed straight through her chest, and she bit down hard on her bottom lip.

She should’ve known he was going to do this. Except she didn’t, because his casual visits had come to a complete stop when they’d become virtual strangers off the ice.

After considering her answer for a moment and estimating the distance and the effort it would take to get to the door of her apartment, she typed a reply.

_No._

Only a few seconds later, a buzz in her hand: _Should I take this personally or is this your way of telling me you’re out of cheesecake and you’re not letting me in before I go and get some?_

The twitch of her mouth was almost a smile, but not quite. _Nothing personal. It’s late and we have a flight to catch tomorrow. Remember the skating thing we signed up for?_

_I call bullshit, Virtch._

Even with roughly three sets of walls between them and multiple months of estrangement from each other, he could still see right through her. It was unfair, really.

She knew she was faced with two options now: either she ignored him and turned off her phone, in which case she could expect a lot of persistent banging on her front door in a minute when he figured out she was giving him the silent treatment, or she could tell him the truth.

In the end, she went with the most painful option, simply because she had never let pain get in the way of anything in her life, and she’d done far too much of that with Scott lately.

_Fine, you’ve got me all figured out. I can’t really get to the door atm._

Only a few seconds of silence before his answer popped up on the screen.

_Where are you_

_In my bed and I want to sleep_ , she was thinking desperately, almost wishfully, but her fingers were moving for her.

_In my empty bathtub._

She stayed still and listened intently for any sign of a key turning in the lock, expecting him to come inside with his copy of her house key (she’d never asked him to give it back, which she probably should have). But there was nothing. Her phone stayed silent.

For the next twenty minutes, there was a whole lot of nothing, until there was something: right around the moment when she’d accepted the fact that he wasn’t coming back anymore, she heard it.

A key in the lock. Footsteps in the living room. They rounded into the hallway and stopped in front of the bathroom.

“T?”

“I’m in here,” she called back, her throat aching like she’d swallowed glass.

The door handle went down and Scott stepped into the room, caution in his eyes and a box in his hands. She saw him swallow when he detected the ice packs she was holding to her chins, but instead of asking her if she was okay and why she’d been at the pub when her legs were clearly bothering her, he didn’t say anything.

He put the box he was holding on the counter, pulled off his coat, draped it over Lauren's laundry basket in the corner, and took a step closer to the tub.

“I know what you’re doing and you’re not going to destroy my bathtub with those boots.”

He looked down at his boots, the most country boy-esque boots he owned, and scrunched up his nose. “My feet probably don’t smell nice, though.”

“Don’t care. Off with the boots.”

She was starting to sound a little more seductively than she’d like, and so she schooled her face into the most bored, don’t-even-think-I’m-trying-to-seduce-you face she could muster as she watched him take off his boots and set them neatly next to the bath mat. Then, in an effortlessly casual way only Scott Moir had the confidence to move, he grabbed the box and climbed into the tub with her.

“Baskin-Robbins,” he said simply, handing her the plastic fork he’d whipped out of his back pocket and pulling open the lid of the box. “Not your favorite, but the only place that was still open.”

Tessa leaned over to peer inside the box.

It was cheesecake. Of course it was.

 _Romcom Moir in action,_ she thought as she took the fork from him, but she didn’t express it, because she couldn’t remember the last time she would’ve allowed him to step into a tub with her and she didn’t want to scare him off.

Because this was nice. For a moment – and even if it was just that: a moment – she didn’t feel like she had to say something heavy and loaded, like all the stuff they’d (quite literally) been dancing around since December.

Maybe they could create a new comfort zone right here in her bathtub, where they had the same sense of security they only ever still felt on the ice lately.

They dug into the cheesecake, forgetting about their strict diet and the pressure involving Worlds that had been looming over them since Four Continents. Tessa figured as long as she kept eating, she could avoid his eyes and the conversation they were bound to have, because she knew Scott wasn’t just going to climb into her bathtub to feed her cheesecake and leave when they were done.

In the end, she managed a whole slice before she could no longer ignore the way he kept not-so-subtly clearing his throat. She cut her eyes to his, her legs trapped between his and her heart somewhere in her stomach.

“Are you okay?”

Those were the words she didn’t want to hear. It was a lot harder to lie straight to his face than it was to ignore his texts, especially when a cloud of vodka was fogging up her brain.

(Her – and Scott’s – friends tended to become their most entertaining selves when they were drunk. Tessa just became a very bad liar. And she knew Scott knew that.)

“Why are Matt and Luke in town right before we leave for Worlds?” she asked instead of answering his question. It was the polar opposite of what they’d been taught to do in therapy, but she figured she had just as much right to an answer as he did.

And truthfully, she was tipsy enough that she would probably pee in front of him if she had to, so their carefully set out lines were already blurred to begin with.

“They’re on the afternoon flight to L.A. tomorrow, they’re joining our parents in the stands. Are you okay?”

She looked into his eyes for only a few seconds before she lowered her gaze to the collar of his checkered shirt. That might be one of the things that was bothering her the most: simple eye contact. Something that had never felt uncomfortable with Scott, and that now seemed like a tricky set of hurdles – hurdles she knew she couldn’t take without breaking the dam of emotions in her head and pouring out every feeling she’d had over the last six months.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t brave enough. Her mom had told her that: _keeping your feelings from him isn’t cowardly, Tessa. You’re trying to protect him, and while I’m not sure if this is the best way to do it, it takes courage to want to guard him from your own burdens._

Maybe if she cared less, she’d tell him. Maybe if she didn’t feel nauseas at the thought of breaking through that wall they’d so carefully constructed to keep things in place, she’d consider telling him what was really going on inside her head.

“Rough day,” she settled on in the end, talking to his knee instead of his face. “But I’ll be fine on Monday, I promise.”

Her go-to sentence since December: _I’ll be fine on Monday._

_I’ll skate longer than thirty seconds next week._

_We’ll do a full run-through the week after._

“You don’t have to be,” he said after an unconventional few seconds of silence, placing his arms on either side of the tub. “And it’s completely normal if you aren’t. One step at a time, ‘kay?”

It was the first time he’d said that, with all the stress surrounding Worlds and the knowledge that they had to come out first if they wanted to have momentum leading up to the Games. The first time he implied that maybe it was okay if they didn’t top the Russians on that podium next week.

She nodded, even though she didn’t believe it herself.

His gaze lingered on her a few seconds longer, which she tried really hard to ignore by scooping up the biggest bite of cheesecake yet. He dove in at the exact same time, making his plastic fork clash with hers, and emerging triumphantly as the conqueror of her bite.

“I could’ve given you a ride, you know,” he said around the bite of cheesecake. “You didn’t have to take a cab.”

She heard the words he was saying, but the tick of his jaw was indicative of what he was really thinking: _you didn’t have to flee the premises the moment I walked in._

“I didn’t want to ruin your night out by sulking over how bad my legs are, because I promise you, that’s what would’ve happened had you ordered me a few more drinks. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing myself talk about pain.”

Breath hitching in her throat, Tessa could feel she was going to skip the awkward blubbering phase and head straight for ugly sobbing.

Damn you, vodka.

The only thing standing between her and having a second - or third? She was starting to lose count - emotional breakdown in front of Scott was barreling through the tears and blurting out something else that had been bugging her for months on end now, so she did, because they were sitting in her freaking _bath_ tub and she might never get the chance again to tell him.

“And this is probably beside the point, but I know Marina tried to get you to test out new partners back in November, so while I admire your effort to dodge that conversation topic whenever I bring it up, you no longer have to pretend like it isn’t true.”

The expression on his face seemed torn between embarrassed and mortified, like a kid getting caught stealing candy from the top shelve. “Did she…”

“No, she didn’t tell me. She didn’t have to. There’s no shortage of gossip in the skating world, Scott.”

Jaw clenched, he grumbled something under his breath and stabbed the cheesecake with his fork. “Yeah, tell me about it. After Worlds last season, when the media went nuts about our free skate, Charlie would stop me in the hallway every day and pretend he was going to kiss me. He always ran off before I could punch him. It went on for weeks.”

Tessa remembered those weeks following Worlds like it was yesterday. The media coverage of their performance to Umbrellas of Cherbourg had been insane, more than it ever had been after any of their previous performances, all because of the moment a few seconds before the ending of the program where it looked like Scott was going to kiss her. She didn’t remember much of the moment itself because it was just an unfortunate combination of both of their timings (or at least that’s what she made of it), but the mayhem it had caused among Canadian spectators had reached their training base in Canton in no time.

By now, they were pretty much used to the “Are you guys a couple?” question, because every single reporter in Canada has asked them about that almost-kiss since their silver medal win in 2008 (albeit phrased slightly differently each time). It had become routine to put on a smile and say how much of a compliment it was to their skating.

All of that left Tessa wondering why she couldn’t muster the same smile for Scott now as she stared a hole into the fabric of his bootcut jeans, when it was just the two of them.

“Just to let you know, I said no every single time she suggested it.”

She forced her gaze back to his eyes, afraid of what she would find there. Betrayal. Hurt. Anger. Any of the emotions they’d only shared with their eyes over the last few months.

“Marina. New partner try-outs.”

“Oh.” She knew she was supposed to say how grateful she was, but different words came out of her mouth. “Don’t you ever wonder what it could’ve been like if you did?”

His whole body stiffened instantly at her words. “Tess, I…”

“No, hear me out for a second. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” She wanted to reach out for him but remembered she couldn’t, so she let her hand fall to her side. “For all we know, you’re wasting what could be the best years of your career doing July run-throughs in front of an audience of 8000 people. I know we’ve tried to be optimistic about this, but my legs might not ever get back to how they were, Scott.”

“And we know they won’t.” He moved the cheesecake out of the way and grabbed her calves with gentleness in his touch but fire in his eyes. “Your legs aren’t going to get back to how they were, but we’re going to figure out how you can use them in a different way that will get you the same results. We already are. We’ve made heaps of progress since December, and I know you don’t always see that, but I do. I'm here to believe in you even when you don't in yourself, remember?”

His palms were digging into her calves right underneath the scars of the surgery, slowly and calculated, massaging the muscles and bringing some relief to her burning legs - but not to her heart. She felt it aching in her chest like someone had tied strings around it and was pulling them tighter and tighter.

“And what about us?” she asked quietly. “Are we going to figure out how to handle us?”

His hands moved up and his thumbs started drawing circles in her knees. “Yes, Tess, we will. And I will try harder not to be an asshole all the time.”

“You’re not an asshole, Scott.”

“Fine, not all the time. But often enough.”

She swallowed hard, not quite ready to match the restrained grin on his face. They’d had versions of this talk over the last few weeks - they both knew something needed to change, even if they were avoiding the elephant in the room - but she needed to know he meant it this time. “Do you promise?”

At her words, his eyebrows did the reversed V thing, and in that moment he reminded her more of the boy who’d hidden in the pantry with her at his own birthday party than the guy who hadn’t called her once when she was in London for post-op recovery. They’d never broken a promise to each other since he was ten and she was eight, and she only wanted him to make that promise to her now if he wasn’t planning on breaking it.

He leaned in closer then, taking up more of her space than he had off the ice in a while.

She wanted him to take all of it. But she didn’t know how to tell him that.

“I promise.”    

She managed a little smile, and even if it seemed forced, it was something. “Good.”

He laughed at her response, a genuine, ringing laugh that bounced off the tiled walls of the bathroom. Genuine laughs weren’t as rare for him as they had been for her over the last couple of months, because he was more straight-forward with his emotions than she was: when he laughed, he either meant it or he made sure you could tell he didn't.

She didn't know if that meant he was less stubborn than she was or just more carefree.  _Heart first_ , her mom had once called it. What you saw is what you got with Scott. He didn't hold grudges against people for very long, and he was always the one who managed to turn a tense moment into something lighter, which was exactly what he did now.

“Did you know the ‘don’t eat anything after eight p.m.’ thing is total bullshit?”

It was the most random thing he'd said all night, and he sounded both proud and satisfied at the shifting expression on her face. He grinned, knowing he was succeeding at turning her mood around. “I’m not shitting you, there’s no scientific proof why you should stop eating after eight o’clock when you’re trying to lose weight. Our bodies use calories all the same, no matter when we consume them.”

Tessa shook her head at him, forcing back a smile. “I’m not questioning that, but I doubt those statistics can be used as an argument when you’re eating cheesecake in a bathtub at… a little past one in the morning.”

“The bathtub has nothing to do with this.”

“It doesn’t, but it adds to the drama factor.”

He grinned and continued chewing on a new bite of cheesecake, but the light in his eyes died out as her gaze stayed locked on his, until eventually they were sitting completely still again.

“You don’t have to hide in your bathtub, Tess.”

 _Christ, T, look away. It’s not that hard: just look. Away_.

“I’m not hiding, I was being dramatic.”

He laughed without actually laughing, which sounded more like a dry huff of air. “Oh, really? You know what would be even more dramatic?”

“What?” she asked, but wished she hadn’t when his hand shot forward to the tap.

“Sitting in a bathtub with a box of cheesecake and getting totally drenched.”

At his last word, the shower head turned on and started dumping cold water on both of them, making Tessa jump and Scott laugh. She wrestled in his grip for a good few seconds, trying to escape the ice-cold stream of water, but he kept her hands away from the tap.

“Scott, turn it _off_!” She pushed herself up and stood upright, leaning sideways to dodge the water, but it was already too late: her hair was soaking wet, and so were her top and shorts.

She wanted to feel pissed at him, but for some reason she didn’t.

“You have officially lost all of your privileges in this apartment,” she said when he finally let her step out of the bathtub, trying to sound irritated (a failed attempt).

He was leaning his head against the edge of the tub because he was laughing so hard, and she didn't think she'd ever seen him like that in the last six months.

“I know you think you’re so funny, but you’re going to clean this up, Scott Moir.”

“Considering you were the one who provoked me, I suggest we make it a team effort.” He stood upright in the middle of the tub, turned off the tap and caught the towel she chucked at him with a cocky little smile he hadn’t used on her in ages.

Anytime he did use it, Tessa hated it. She blamed the alcohol for the fact that she didn’t right now.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” There was a chuckle in her voice, not quite the luring tone she was going for, but it was enough to turn his smirk into a grin.

The next moment, the air between them felt like time had stilled only in this little part of the world, and an odd, warm sensation sunk down the pit of Tessa’s stomach. Both of their smiles turned into expressionless stares, not quite sure what was happening, _if_ anything was happening, and not sure what to do about it either.

Tessa felt the shift between them in her gut. It was like she could see right through him, for the first time in maybe months. If there was still a wall between them, it was now made out of glass, so transparent she could almost trick herself into thinking it had never been there in the first place.

For how long it would stay like this, she didn’t know.

And then the nausea was back, rippling through her stomach and taking up all the space in her head. But not in the way it had been when she’d considered telling him the truth before; this time, she couldn’t imagine holding the words in any longer, not when he was looking at her like the ten-year-old boy he’d once been, and not any longer than she already had. Which was six months too long.

“It hurts.”

Two words she’d said before in his presence, but always in a different context. An almost business-like context, as if she wasn’t really talking about herself, or as if she was talking about her legs like they weren’t really hers.

She wasn’t even sure if she was talking about her legs at all right now.

“It freaking hurts, all the time, and I keep waiting for it to stay away, for it to just leave my body, but it never does. When we’ve had a good practice run, I can barely sleep at night because of the pain. It’s exhausting, and I feel like I’m putting all this weight on you when I don’t want to, when sometimes I don’t even know how much more I can take myself, and… and… it's just _hurting, c_ onstantly.”

_This thing between us is hurting me. You are hurting me._

The words were only ghosts in her head, never spoken out loud, but she saw their shadows reflected in his eyes when he stared at her.

He stayed as still as a statue when she was silent again, like he was bracing himself for one of their hardest lifts. Tessa didn’t know if that was a good or a bad sign, but then, when his jaw clenched and his chin started wobbling, she realized, maybe for the first time, that he’d been hurting, too.

When she was hurting, he was hurting. They shouldn’t have been so compatible since they were kids, but damn if they weren't.

“I’m so sorry, kiddo.” His arms came around her like crutches she’d been aching for for months, pulling her back over and into the bathtub, holding her up. But unlike in their lifts, where she was doing half of the work, he was carrying all of her now - and she let him. “Tess, you don't have to keep pretending like everything is fine when it's not. I promise you I can take it, whatever it is you need me to carry. If you need to scream about it, or cry, or whatever, you can. You have to. I promise I can take it; we can share the weight.”

She'd reached the ugly sobbing phase, later than she'd expected but not unexpected either. “I’m sorry,” she said in his shoulder, not really caring why or what she was saying, only that she knew she had to. “I promise I’m going to be alright, I just couldn’t…”

“I know, I know.” He was pressing into her shoulder just as fervently – to smother his sobs? – but his face was turning, until she felt him rubbing his nose against her neck like a dog asking for affection.

If this was the only moment where she had all of him, raw and unguarded and transparent as glass, she would take it.

Her face was wet when she pulled him up against her, from the shower or her tears she didn’t know; he merely looked dazed at the force of her grip. Before he would realize what she was doing, she pressed an open-mouthed kiss on his lips, but it only took a second for her to realize she hadn’t been thinking about what she was doing, either.

And it felt wrong the moment she did.

Because it felt so right at the same time.

She took another second. And another one. She needed them, just a few, so she knew for sure they weren't broken. They were just bent, or molded, but fixable nonetheless; and another second. And Scott eased into her once the element of surprise had faded, hungrily, almost greedily, and like he did all things: heart first.

And, like she had done twice before, when she was fifteen and he was seventeen, and when she was seventeen and he was nineteen, she was the one to put a stop to it.

Their lips unlocked, their time unfroze, and their eyes met each other in the midst of it.   

“Eh – I guess it’s time for me to go,” Scott said after a few seconds. He coughed away the strain in his voice, letting go of her and awkwardly bending down to pat the wet side of the bathtub with his towel.

Tessa snapped out of her trance to stop him. “Leave it, I’ll clean it up in a minute.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” She took his towel and tried really hard not to look up at him when he backed up to get his boots. His socks were soaking wet, but she'd rather clean up after him than have him stay in her bathroom any longer than he had to.      

“Right,” he said after a beat of silence, testing the air between them and finding nothing but a bunch of roadblocks. “I guess I have to get some sleep too. Pick you up tomorrow at ten?”

“I’m driving with mom and Jordan, actually, so I’ll see you at the gate.” She squeezed her eyes shut, her chest squeezing together just as tightly. God, that just hurt to get out. 

“Oh. Yeah, that’s fine.” He blinked motionlessly and bent down to grab his boots. “You don’t have to let me out, I’ll lock up behind me.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“No problem,” he murmured under his breath as he scurried out of the bathroom and into the living room with his jacket and boots.

She watched him put them on, just because she didn’t want to be a complete asshole and leave him alone in the hallway. It made for an awkward fifteen seconds in which they were both trying to come up with a way to say all the things that were hanging in the air between them, so palpable they could almost reach up and touch them. If only they cared less about what the consequences might be if they did.

In the end, they both failed.

Right before he turned around to the door with his jacket still unzipped, his head whipped up at her and he found her gaze.

“Best in the world, eh?”

The hallway seemed a million miles long, but Tessa felt goosebumps on her arms as if he was standing right in front of her. “Best in the world,” she echoed.   

The corners of his mouth trembled but it never really turned into a smile. When the door closed behind him and the last part of him was gone, Tessa felt like the pain in her shins had traveled all the way up to her heart and was piercing straight through her.

 

____________________________

Half an hour later, when she was tucked into bed with fluffy sox on her feet and painkillers coursing through her system, the buzz announcing his text lulled her back from her sleep. She groaned but rolled over anyway, thinking it might be Lauren who needed some emergency intervention at her friend’s house, when her phone buzzed a second time.

It wasn’t Lauren. But she knew that before she even opened the two texts.

_I can’t quit you, Tess, because I don't know how._

_I guess that makes me an asshole after all._


End file.
